OPINION: The Ninety-Five Seats (2)
By Ustaz Abubakar Siddeeq Muhammad
In the first part of this series, published only yesterday and deliberately so, for this matter will not wait, I set out the facts of the allocation of ninety-five Hajj seats to Al-Firdaus Hajj and Umrah Services Ltd,a company belonging to the President of our association, which, on his own admission, never applied for them, never lodged a bank guarantee, and had written only for a refund of its deposit.
I described the six days of silence that met the NEC’s two letters, the defence of gang-up that answered motive but not principle, and the Board’s insistence that no man be condemned unheard.
I promised to tell you how the matter ended. It ended better than it might have, and there is much in the ending that deserves our gratitude.
A Chairman Resigns and Returns
On 25 October, the Chairman of our Board of Trustees tendered his resignation on personal grounds. He had stood with the members who were denied; his position had always been that leadership must advocate for the weak among us and not profit while others went without.
That he should have been worn down by the affair is a measure of how much it cost the men who tried to do it rightly.
The appeal to him was not mine alone, though I made it too. It came from his fellow members of the Board of Trustees, from the National Executive Council (NEC) itself, and from among his numberless friends in the industry calls, messages and admonitions, all pressing the same entreaty.
Patience under hurt from one’s own people is a hard virtue, and a virtue only by the help of Allah. We remembered the Prophet, peace be upon him, at Taif, harmed by the very people he had come to help yet not abandoning them; and Abu Bakr, may Allah be pleased with him, standing firm at the most dangerous hour of the community’s history, when lesser men might have walked away.
The believer who mixes with people and bears their harm, we are taught, is better than he who withdraws. And we are commanded to hold fast together to the rope of Allah and not to be divided.
On 26 October, he withdrew his resignation. It was, as I told him, the decision of a true leader one who listens, forgives and puts the interest of the association above personal hurt.
In a season when others were reaching for advantage, our Chairman let go of office rather than see the house break; and then, when it was safe to return, he returned. Nothing in this affair reflects better upon us than that.
The Regulator Acts
Then came the letter that settled it. By its reference NAHCON/AN/66/IV dated 23 October 2026, the National Hajj Commission (NAHCON) formally withdrew the 2027 Hajj slots allocated to Al-Firdaus for failure to apply within the stipulated window, and directed that the slots be redistributed to qualifying operators who had duly applied and met the criteria.
The joint meeting of the Board and the NEC had, in the meantime, affirmed the necessary disciplinary measure, and our Deputy President (Hajj) assumed the duties of Acting President.
That single letter did more to restore confidence in our industry than a hundred circulars could have done. It vindicated the position the Board had held from the first that the wrong was not merely internal to us but had a source, and that the source could be reached by dialogue and evidence rather than by noise.
And the credit for it belongs, plainly, to the Chairman of the Commission, His Excellency Ambassador Ismail Abba Yusuf. Until his coming, such matters were not handled so transparently; but for his personal intervention, this case would not have ended as it did. He is owed our appreciation, and he has it.
Yet candour requires one distinction. The complaint our members have carried for years is not against the Chairman but against a culture in the operations arm of the Commission a culture in which, it is said, the operator who is used as a pawn is rewarded with an allocation, and the operator who stands in the way has a hundred and one infractions invented against him.
It is said, and I repeat it as a report and not as a verdict, because the remedy for such a culture is precisely what the Chairman is attempting: transparency, published criteria, and a record that can be audited.
What the World Teaches
Readers may wonder whether we have been too hard on one of our own. Let them weigh the matter against what serious institutions everywhere demand of those who lead them.
Conflicts of interest must be declared, not merely regretted. Under Nigeria’s Companies and Allied Matters Act 2020, as under the United Kingdom’s Companies Act 2006, a director or trustee who has an interest in a transaction must disclose it and, where the conflict is material, stand aside from the decision altogether.
The OECD Principles of Corporate Governance say the same in plainer terms: related-party dealings must be conducted at arm’s length and on terms no worse than those available to anyone else.
A leader who is both applicant and beneficiary, without disclosure, offends the first principle of fiduciary life.
The regulator must not be the operator. The UN Convention against Corruption, in its article on public procurement, requires objective criteria, published rules and an effective right of review.
A system that refuses to publish its criteria and then allocates to a non-applicant has failed every one of those tests and that failure belongs to the system, which is why our quarrel was always with a process and never with a person’s skin.
The fiduciary standard stands higher than the criminal law. No governance code on earth asks only whether a trustee has committed a crime.
The UK Charity Commission, the Nigerian corporate statutes, and the ministerial codes of most democracies all ask a different question: has trust been compromised? A conflict, once known, is resolved by recusal or by relinquishment not by pleading that nothing was technically illegal.
Fair hearing precedes sanction. The same conventions of administrative justice that govern courts govern associations: notice of the charge, an opportunity to answer, a decision on the evidence, and a penalty proportionate to the finding.
Our Board asked for exactly this, and asked for it in writing, before any hand was raised.
Comparators in Hajj administration. Malaysia’s Tabung Haji and Indonesia’s BPKH are held to independent governance with published rules precisely because the pilgrim’s money is sacred and the pilgrim cannot audit it himself.
The Saudi Ministry licenses every operator and allocates by rule, not by favour. Nigeria can aspire to no less, and under this Chairman is beginning to.
Those who raise concerns in good faith must be protected. A house that punishes the whistle-blower and rewards the pawn has no future, however many seats it distributes.
What Was Done Right
It would be a poor column that dwelt only on fault. In this affair, our association did several things that deserve to be commended.
The NEC acted with patience and procedure two letters, a reasonable interval, evidence, and escalation only when silence became defiance. The Board insisted on a hearing rather than a hanging, and urged that even a good-faith error should end in restitution rather than vengeance.
The Chairman of the Board of Trustees put the association above his own hurt, resigned rather than divide it, and returned when unity was possible. The Commission’s Chairman chose transparency where the easier path was silence. And members, for the most part, kept their counsel and let the process work.
Even the President, in fairness, stayed within the house. He argued, he protested, he wrote; he did not take his case to the streets or seek to burn the building down about our ears. For that, at least, he deserves our acknowledgment.
Not a Question of Region
I am told there are whispers in certain quarters that our President was singled out in this affair because of the region he comes from or the language he speaks. Let me address that plainly, and let me be the first to say it: it is far from the truth, and it is a distraction from it.
If anything, the charge runs the other way. Charity begins at home, and what is good for the goose must be good for the gander. We cannot be seen on the national stage fighting for fairness and justice in the allocation of Hajj seats while forgetting to practise those same virtues within our own house, which is this Association.
To demand equity of NAHCON and to wink at inequity among ourselves would be the rankest hypocrisy, and the public would be right to despise us for it. The principle we pressed upon the Commission is the principle by which we are bound.
A leader of this Association is not entitled to a seat he did not earn simply because he leads it; neither is any member, from whatever region or tongue.
And so, I turn the matter round, and I do so in earnest. If anyone in this industry knows of a similar case involving any member of AHUON whether in the NEC or the Board of Trustees whose company was given an allocation of Hajj 2027 seats without a proper application as stipulated by NAHCON, I urge that person to bring out the name of such a company. Let us fear Allah and speak out.
This is not a time to protect a friend or shield a kinsman; it is a time to be clean. Silence on such matters is not golden. When a wrong is done and the one who knows it holds his peace, that silence is not discretion, it is complicity, and Allah will take the silent one to task for it as surely as the one who did the deed.
We who lead cannot benefit at the expense of the people we lead. If there be more cases, let them come into the light and be dealt with by the same measure. Only so shall anyone be able to say with a straight face that what we did to our President we would do to any man or woman among us.
Conclusion
The lesson of all this is contained in a sentence I have repeated to our President in my capacity as his SPOC: unity without discipline is anarchy.
We may forgive one another; we may not abolish the rules by which we live together, for the rules are the only reason a thousand operators can be a body rather than a crowd.
The seats were returned, and they will go to members who earned them and, in that fact, lies the whole argument for what we did.
We go now to the Hajj Conference and Exhibition in Jeddah in November, and to the Nusuk Masar camp selection that presses upon us, and we must go as a united and a credible bloc.
Credibility is not a thing we can claim; it is a thing others must be able to see. This week, by the grace of Allah, they saw a house that corrected itself and there is no stronger recommendation for an association than that.
Nothing is hidden today. We mean no harm to any person’s interest, and least of all to the reputation of one who has led us. But Hajj must not be made to suffer for the caprice of any entity, and the best must be given to the Nigerian pilgrim. May Allah reward those who stood for justice, console those who were hurt, forgive those who erred out of emotion, and keep our hearts united as one. Ameen.
Ustaz Abubakr Siddeeq Muhammad, is SPOC and Member, Board of Trustees (BoT), Association for Hajj and Umrah Operators of Nigeria (AHUON).
Editor’s Note: This is the concluding part of an opinion series by Ustaz Abubakr Siddeeq Muhammad, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Association for Hajj and Umrah Operators of Nigeria (AHUON).
The views and allegations expressed are those of the author and do not represent the position of Hajj Gazette. And we recognises the right of reply of all parties mentioned in the article and welcomes their responses, clarifications or supporting evidence for fair consideration and publication.
